ESPN's Jay Bilas excited to see UK in Bahamas

ESPN basketball analyst Jay Bilas said, “There were a lot of bad seeds this year, and we’re not going to care because once the tournament starts, nobody cares. You really don’t care. But it has a profound effect on the context of the tournament.”(Photo: USA TODAY Sports)

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Basketball in August is upon us. I'm en route – in flight, actually, as I type this – to the Bahamas, where tomorrow Kentucky will play the first of six games against international competition in eight days. It's a great chance to see what the Cats are all about, because the level of competition should be pretty solid.

Along with the Dominican Republic National Team, ranked 26th in the world, and Puerto Rican National Team Reserves, this French pro team UK is playing looks pretty interesting. And old. The average age of the only roster I could find online is 28. The oldest player is 35. There are guys who played college ball at Syracuse, Gonzaga, LSU, Xavier and West Virginia (former Mountaineers star Da'Sean Butler).

These games probably won't all be cake walks for the Cats. Some of them could be losses. But the trip will be a great gauge of this team's potential. One guy who's excited about seeing it? ESPN's Jay Bilas, who will call all six games. I caught up with Bilas before we both left for the Bahamas, and here's what he had to say about Kentucky:

On the value of UK's trip to the Bahamas: "I think it's got tremendous value. A lot of teams look back on these trips as having been pivotal moments in their development, springboards for them and their seasons. To be able to have practices and then to go on the road and practice and play – and it's nice to do it in a fun setting, but they'll be basically on their own there, even though Big Blue Nation will follow them. They'll be with each other nonstop, so it's a great kind of team-building, team-bonding experience, and it also gives everybody kind of a baseline at which to start. They'll kind of know where they are and know what they need to work on and need to do to help the team and to get on the floor. So I think it's nothing but positives."

On the potential he sees in UK's roster now that it has several "veterans": "I think it's another positive. The only negative comes from the fact that with that 10 guys who can all play, 10 guys aren't going to be able to play as much as they want to play. If you went down the line and said, 'Hey, how many minutes do you think you're going to play,' Cal would need 400 minutes to satisfy everybody in a game. And he doesn't have that; he's got 200 to hand out. So that's the only negative, that you may have some guys that are disappointed. And how are they going to handle that disappointment? Are they going to channel it the right way? Is it going to be productive instead of destructive? Because most of their problems are the kind that everybody wants.

" There's going to be legitimate competition in practice every day, not only for playing time but I would find it hard to believe that any team in the country is going to put more talent on the floor day to day to go against. So if you can go through that season, you're going to get better whether you're playing big minutes in games or not. So guys coming back, I see it as a huge positive. The younger guys are going to have guys they can look up to, that know how to behave. When I say how to behave, I don't mean saying 'please' and 'thank you.' I mean that they're going to know how to run all the drills. There's going to be less wasted time. There's going to be less of the coaches talking and more of the players performing in practice every day. That can't help but be a better thing."

On who or what about this Kentucky team he's most interested in observing in the Bahamas: "Wow, I don't know that there's any one thing. I just think combinations. How do they put this all together? How are they going to play with this kind of team? Because they can go a number of different ways. You can play small and really get after it. Or you can play big and put an NBA-sized front line out there – an NBA-sized team, essentially, with the guards. Not many teams are going to have a pair of 6-5 guards they put on the floor. So it's going to be fun to watch. It's only one step. What they do in the Bahamas isn't going to be indicative of what they'll do the rest of the year, but my sense is something will happen there that you're going to be able to look back on – people who are really paying attention – and at the end of the year go, 'Boy, if it wasn't for that, who knows if they would've been this good this early.' "

This is the full press conference that Kentucky coach John Calipari held Wednesday ahead of this weekend's trip to the Bahamas.
Kyle Tucker